Gum and Ammo

Trinity students hope gum can up oral hygiene in MREs

By Chris Warren

Photo By Jenn Hair

Soldiers deployed in the field have a lot of balls to juggle: achieving their mission, staying safe, and getting enough to eat, to name just a few. Low on the list of priorities, if it even registers, is oral hygiene. But the fact is that the bacteria and plaque that build up in people’s mouths and lead to cavities and other problems don’t take a hiatus just because a soldier is preoccupied.

A group of Trinity University students have developed a product they think can help: a mint-flavored gum specially formulated to fight plaque and bacteria build-up and whiten teeth. Known as Plova—after the plover bird that cleans the mouths of crocodiles—this teeth-cleansing gum has already been prototyped and manufactured. It was produced only after months of testing and countless surveys of local dentists and potential consumers. “People brush twice a day,” says Thayer Selleck, Plova’s chief operating officer. “But there’s a 12 to 14 hour gap when bacteria and plaque builds up. That’s the problem we want to solve.”

Selleck and the other student entrepreneurs behind Plova (CEO Cole Evans and CFO Vikram Patel) have also secured $30,000 in funding by winning two rounds of the Stumberg prize, a startup pitch competition held at Trinity. Because it is a better-tasting alternative to mouthwash, Hilton and Marriott hotels in San Antonio are going to offer the gum to their guests starting this year. But the students are also aggressively trying to become a supplier to the armed forces by collaborating with an established military vendor. “We’d like to become standard-issue in MREs (meals ready to eat),” says Sellek.